Terms of Service

Earshot SF (“the Service”, “we”, “us”) is not affiliated with any government agency. “We” and “us” include the owner and operator of Earshot SF. By using the Service you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

The Service is solely offered from and intended for use in the United States.

What the Service is

The Service takes a San Francisco address and reports publicly available information near it that is associated with sound: fire and police stations, hospitals with emergency rooms, schools, transit stops, light rail lines, cable car lines, freeway ramps, construction permits, repeated noise complaints, bars and entertainment venues, and recurring event venues. For each it reports what the record is and whether it is very close or close to the subject address. A check with nothing close enough to be flagged is marked “Not relevant”, and no further detail about it is shown.

The free check shows which of these checks found something and how close it is. The full report adds, for each finding, the named record, its address, supporting details, its source and the date of its data, with a map showing the approximate location of each finding relative to the address. Locations and proximity are estimates. Everything on this site is part of the Service and covered by these terms.

People use the Service for many reasons: deciding whether to rent, buy or lease a home, choosing where to stay, work or run a business, or simply learning about a place. These terms apply whatever the reason.

What the Service is not

• It is not a measurement. Nothing in a report is a decibel reading, a predicted noise level or an acoustic survey. Every flag is a proximity or pattern signal drawn from publicly available information.
• It is not complete. It reports what its sources contain; see What this does not cover, below.
• It is not current to the minute. Each check is refreshed on its own schedule, weekly to quarterly, and every entry shows the date of the data behind it. Records can be wrong or out of date at their source.
• It is not professional advice. It is not real estate, appraisal, legal, financial, investment, tax, insurance, engineering, architectural, construction, acoustic, medical, health or environmental advice, and it is not a substitute for visiting a property at different times of day and on different days throughout the year.

No warranty

The Service and all reports are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. We do not warrant that reports are accurate, complete or error-free, or that the Service will be uninterrupted.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data or goodwill, arising from any use of the Service or of a report, including any decision made on the basis of one. Our total liability for any claim arising from the Service is limited to the greater of the total amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or US$9. This applies whether you used the free check or viewed or downloaded a full report.

These limits apply to everyone, not only the person who obtained a report: anyone who uses the free check or the full report, anyone who reads, receives or relies on a report, and anyone bringing a claim through or on behalf of any of them. A report is provided solely for the use of the person who obtained it from the Service and is not to be distributed. Anyone who relies on a report they did not obtain themselves does so entirely at their own risk, and we owe them no duty in connection with it.

Fair housing and acceptable use

Reports describe places and what public records say about them. They are never a judgment of any person, business or other organization associated with those places. You agree not to use the Service, or any report, to discriminate against any person, or to steer any person toward or away from a neighborhood, on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, disability or any other characteristic protected by federal, California or San Francisco law. You also agree not to:

• scrape, bulk-query or automate access to the Service;
• share, forward, resell, redistribute or publish a report, in whole or in part, or anything compiled from reports as a dataset, ranking or service of your own;
• present a report as a professional inspection, an acoustic survey or a disclosure required by law;
• use the Service in a way that breaches the terms of the data sources listed under Sources and licenses.

Your responsibility

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Earshot SF, its owner and anyone acting on their behalf from and against any and all claims, demands, losses, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, settlements, fines, penalties, costs and expenses of any kind, including but not limited to attorneys’ fees, expert and consultant fees, court and filing costs, investigation costs and the cost of enforcing this section, arising out of or relating to: (a) your breach of these terms, including the acceptable-use terms above; (b) your use or misuse of the Service or of any report; (c) your sharing or distribution of a report, or anyone’s reliance on a report you shared; or (d) your violation of any law or of anyone else’s rights.

What you receive

A full report can be viewed on the site, with an interactive map, or downloaded to your device as a PDF. A downloaded file is fixed as of the day it was issued; the page on the site shows the information as it stands when you open it. That information may change, so a report for the identical address may show different results at a later point in time. There is no account and no login.

Price

Full reports are currently free. If we begin charging for them, the price will be shown before you pay, and these terms will be updated first. Viewing or downloading a report means you accept these terms.

Your use of a report

The Service, its text and the arrangement of its reports are ours; the underlying public records are not. A report you view or download is licensed to you for your own use only, and may not be shared, forwarded or distributed to anyone else.

Changes and termination

We may change or discontinue the Service and may update these terms. Material changes will be posted here with a new date and will not apply to a report already issued. We may refuse or end access for anyone breaching these terms.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be heard in the state or federal courts located in Los Angeles County.

Informational only, and not a measurement. Flags are drawn from publicly available information and describe what is near an address, not how loud it is. All reported information should be verified in person, at different times of day and at different times of year.

• No accounts, and nothing to sign up for. The free check and the full report ask only for an address.
• The address you enter is sent to our mapping provider, Mapbox, to locate it, and is used to build your report.
• The site uses one short-lived cookie so that a single visit does not look up the same address twice. It does not identify you and is not used for tracking.
• Our host, Vercel, keeps ordinary request logs for operation and security, which can include IP addresses and the pages requested.
• We use no third-party analytics, advertising or tracking services, and we do not sell or share personal information. Because nothing on the site tracks you, a browser's Do Not Track signal has nothing to turn off.

Reports are built from public data. Each entry has a source and a date it was retrieved. Your use of the Service is also subject to those sources’ terms.

• City and County of San Francisco open data (DataSF): building permits and building inspections, SF Public Works street-use permits, SF311 cases, Entertainment Commission permits, registered business locations, schools, city facilities and the city's address register.
• SFMTA transit schedule data (GTFS), used under the SFMTA Transit Data License Agreement; its required disclaimer is below.
• © OpenStreetMap contributors: rail track and freeway ramp geometry, and the locations of a few places no address can place, used under the Open Database License (ODbL). The map's citywide layer carries this notice in the file itself, and any derivative database made from that geometry must be offered under the same license.
• State of California: licensed healthcare facility listings (Department of Health Care Access and Information), the public and private school directories (Department of Education), and authorized farmers markets.
• The US Census Bureau's geocoder, for locating some listed places.
• Mapbox, for maps and for locating the address you enter. Map attribution appears on every map.

SFMTA disclaimer

The SFMTA provides the Data to Licensee on an “as is” and “as available” basis. The SFMTA makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the Data. SFMTA does not warrant that Data will be error-free and assumes no responsibility for anyone’s use of the information. The SFMTA disclaims all warranties in the Data and any application that uses the Data, whether express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. A Licensee and any third party that accesses or uses the Data or uses any application produced or provided by the Licensee that uses the Data does so at its own risk and assumes all liability arising from the use of the Data or an application that uses the Data.

The Licensee agrees that the SFMTA and its employees, officers, directors and agents shall not be liable for damages of any kind arising from the use of Data or any application that uses the Data including but not limited to direct, indirect, incidental, punitive and consequential, and or special damages.

In the SFMTA’s text, “Licensee” is the operator of this Service and “Data” is SFMTA’s transit data.

Clause 12 of the same license requires the following notice on any version of its data we prepare. The transit stop, light rail and cable car records in a report are such a version:

Reproduced with permission granted by the City and County of San Francisco. The information has been provided by means of a nonexclusive, limited, and revocable license granted by the City and County of San Francisco.

The City and County of San Francisco does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or usefulness of any information. The City and County of San Francisco provides this information “as is,” without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, and assumes no responsibility for anyone’s use of the information.

Trademarks

Muni and SFMTA are trademarks of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and its license does not permit their use alongside its data. Reports therefore do not use them: a stop is a “transit stop”, a Metro line is a “light rail line” identified by its letter, and the agency is named only where these terms and a report’s source line identify who published the data, as that license requires. This Service is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the SFMTA or the City and County of San Francisco.

A check that comes back clear means nothing in the sources above was found close enough to the address to be flagged, not that nothing is there. Something just beyond a check’s distance, or missing from its sources, can still be heard.

• The sources are San Francisco agencies, the State of California and OpenStreetMap. Records held by neighboring cities and counties are not included, so an address near the southern county line will not see, for example, a Daly City fire station.
• Sound that no agency records will not appear: a neighbor's dog, a rooftop compressor, a venue without a permit or registration.
• A permit records work that is authorized, not work that is happening on site at any given point in time.
• Noise complaints reflect how often people report, not verified events. A cluster's address is where a complaint was reported, not the source of the noise.
• Venue hours are not recorded by any source. Only a venue holding an extended-hours permit is described as able to open late.
• Nothing here is an acoustic measurement, and the very close and close bands are working distances, not measured ones.

If a report says something about a place or a business that you believe is wrong, email contact@earshotsf.com with the address you searched and the specific record.

We acknowledge every request within ten business days. We then check it against the public record it came from, and aim to tell you the outcome within fifteen business days. Because the data comes from publicly available information, including the records of public agencies, a record that is wrong at its source may also need correcting there. We will advise you when this is the case and suggest you contact that agency for a correction.